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DVD Format Changing Movie-making
rgmoore writes "The Los Angeles Times is running an interesting article on the impact of DVDs on the movie making process. They briefly mention the possibilities of end-users being able to re-edit the movie (with a veiled reference to The Phantom Edit) but focus more on the way that it's starting to influence directors and producers during the course of making the movie."
(since I am too lazy to read an article at 11:30 at night) but I remember reading that now actors are charging extra for all of the outtakes, deleted scenes, making-of footage, and commentary tracks that may or may not even be in the final DVD (and was, before this, basically all thrown away).
Of course now the "commentary" track is being ruined. Take Eye of the Beholder: Ewan McGregor[sic], Ashley Judd, Nonsensical everything, Shittiest movie Ever. And IT has a director's commentary track. Wild Things. Battlefield Earth. WTF? Are they STILL trying to snowjob you? Not like they need to after you shelled out 24 bucks for the DVD. At least if they were fucking honest on them.
Director: Now Ashley Judd starts crying here. [Puffs on cigarett] You know, I must have blacked out here 'cause I don't know what the hell I was thinking...
Instead it's like this:
Director: You can really see Denise Richards reach deep for that emotion. People say that she's just a hot piece of dumb ass but I really think she made a statement with this film...
Goddamn and Goodfellas DOESN'T have a commentary track? AND it's on a two sided DVD?
Kurosawa would never talk about his own movies. That wasn't his business. Let the scholars talk about them. What would he respond when people would as him what his favorite movie was? "The one I'm currently working on."
Says a lot (... damn, Eye of the Beholder!!! Now I'm in a really bad mood. Damn, Slashdot...)
What is music when you despise all sound?
If you run a business and you provide what the customers are asking for, your sales go up and so does your profit!!
Wow - what a concept!!
To bad the movie and music industry still don't understand this.
DVD Format Changing Movie-making
Its changed the Movie Buying experiance all right.
THEN: I just went to blockbuster and grabbed a movie on VHS and bought it.
NOW: go on internet.. search sites.. Collecters Edition has X amount of footage, Directors Cut has Y amount of Footage and comments. the SuperBit version has Better footage but no Z and no Y. and of course finding a review that says EXACTLY what one has over the other is hard to find.
and obvisoly i go to the store and they dont have that version i wanted.
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
From the article:
"New low-cost digital technology gives enthusiasts the chance to be desktop filmmakers, shooting new footage and combining it with existing movies. While DVDs are encoded to safeguard against piracy and copying, and the studios vigorously pursue civil and criminal proceedings against people they catch, more sophisticated computer users still find ways around that. With DVD-writing software, and illegal but fairly easy to find encryption decoders, not only can adventurous viewers reedit movies like "Star Wars" on their computers--removing "characters from a movie that they don't like," as Coppola suggests--but there's the possibility of creating entirely new movies from existing ones."
Couple interesting things here. In this article we are not criminals, we are sophisticated computer users.
And number two, it seems to me that there is support for this behavior by the directors of these films.
Maybe they realize that this is not a crime, it is simply our fair use right when we buy the dvd.
- Just my 2 cents.
The article went a bit too far in casting DVDs as a heroic art form. What was most irksome was it failed to mention the single biggest reason I was an early adopter of the DVD format. Yes, the directors' commentaries are fascinating. Yes, the deleted scenes, making-of documentaries, bios, trailers, and other assorted doo-dads are keen. Yes, the improved picture and sound quality are wonderful. However, even if DVDs were missing all that, I would still be buying them at a voracious rate for one simple reason -- they don't degrade.
The back end of my twenty year old VHS collection is crumbling away. In another twenty years the front half will be gone too. But in 100 years all my DVDs will play with the same quality they do today. You never really own a VHS tape. You're renting it from a decaying universe, and every 15 or 20 years you have to make the rent payment again or you lose your lease.
The DIVX goons specifically did NOT allow porn, softcore or hardcore, on their format. In the post mortum analysis that followed, I remember that this prohibition was compared to a lack of porn (I don't know if it was actively blocked or not) on the Betamax format. Most people tend to believe that blocking porn was one (of many) reasons why DIVX failed.
:-)
On the other hand, the porn industry threw their support completely behind Open DVD (just like they did for VHS), and you can see where the state of things are today...